THE EMBRYOLOGY AND ETIOLOGY OF TUMOURS 89
and
this included the above words, and sent it to the editor of Ziegler’s
Beiträge, and of the Centralblatt für allgemeine Pathologie, the
celebrated pathologist and man of science, the late Geheimrat Dr. Ernst von
Ziegler, Professor in Ordinary of Pathology in the University of Freiburg in
Breisgau, with the request that he would publish it in the latter scientific
journal. He replied that not only would he do so, but that he would have it
translated into German, so that more people might read it. It appeared in full
in vol. xiv., pp. 513-520, 1903. In March, 1905, some two years later, a
discussion took place in Berlin upon cancer. This is reported in the Berliner
kiln. Wochenschrift, 1905, No. 13. The same number contains the brilliant
speech contributed to the discussion by Dr. L. Pick.* In the course of this
Pick proved, step by step, in actual instances and on actual specimens, the scientific
truth of the statement that an ordinary cancer (carcinoma) may, on occasion,
arise from the chorion or trophoblast, that at times this exhibits the
structural appearance of chorio-epithelioma, at others of ordinary cancer—” das
gewohnliche Carcinom.” In this place I cite the opinion of Dr. L. Pick as that
of one fully competent, not only to give a judgment of great scientific value
on this question, but to defend it.
Embryologists
and pathologists might have been expected to have taken the following words **
by the late
* For a summary and
translation of this, see Appendix B.
** Giacomini, C.: “Probleme aus
Entwickelungsanomalien d. menschlichen Embryo,” in Ergebn. Anat. u.
Entwickelungsgesch, 1894, vol. iv., pp. 615-649; loc. cit., p. 640.
The actual words are: “Das Chorion ist von alien Bildungen des Eies
diejenige, welche vor jeder anderen entsteht, sich bald von den anderen Teilen
unabhängig macht, und indem es frühzeitig seine Zellen entwickelt, in den Stand
gesetzt wird, zu leben und zu entwickeln, auch wenn alle anderen Teile des Eies
durch irgend weichen Umstand aufgehört haben, zu existieren.”